DO CONFLICTS THAT I’VE WITH MY PARENTS WILL AFFECT TO MY SELF-EFFICACY? :
AN INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
Novi Qonitatin, Dian Veronika Sakti Kaloeti
Family Empowerment Center (PPK), Faculty of Psychology, Diponegoro University,
Indonesia
qonitatin_novi@yahoo.co.id; veronikasakti@undip.ac.id
Abstract
The heightened conflict that surfaces in the families of adolescents presents unique challenges to both adolescents and their parents as they attempt to deal with the changing nature of their relationship. During this period, conflict has implication to their later life. This study want to analyze differences conflict between mother and father perceived by adolescents. The population of this research are 1533 undergraduate stundents at Diponegoro University (male=479; female=1044; unspecified=10) completed on parent child relationship open ended questionnaire developed by Kim (2010). Content analysis, categorization and cross-tabulations were run for this study. Primary relusts show that there are differences type of conflict between fathers and mothers perceived by adolescents. Self negative attitudes conflict appear on father-adolescents relationship and rules conflict on mother-adolescents relationship. The implications of this research on adolescent’s self efficacy will be discussed.
Key Word: conflict, self-efficacy, parent-adolescent relationship
BACKGROUND
Self-efficacy important to college students because efficacious students embrace challenging goals (Berns, 2004). They are better at monitoring their working time, more persistent, less likely to reject correct hypotheses prematurely, and better at solving conceptual problems than are inefficacious students of equal ability. The most significant influences is actual experience-succesfully performing tasks, solving problems, and making things happen. As Jessor say, whether adolescents forsake risky activities after awhile or become chronically involved in them is determined by the interplay of personal competencies, self-management efficacy, and the prevailing social influences in their lives (Bandura, 1999).
Bandura (1999) say that it is therefore of special interest to examine parental child-rearing practices that supposedly strengthen internal control beliefs and their positive consequences on children's further personality development. Rotter (Bandura, 1999), for example, has argued that "the consistency and treatment by parents" might be essential antecedents of generalized control expectations in children. More importantly, specific aspects of parenting practices have been shown to be especially important contributors to the development of children's control beliefs, including self-efficacy. According that assumption, relation between child and parent is important to develop child’s self-efficacy. That relation including conflict between child and parent that happened in their life.
Tension frequently exists between the individual and the social environment. Many personal troubles result from societal influences, values, or assumptions; inadequate societal support for family goals; and conflict between family values and individual values (Lamanna & Riedmann, 2009). Particularly in adolescent, as a children enter adolescence, parents may deal with potential conflicts by discussion, collaborative problem solving, and compromise. Adolescence often face differences in the values of the family and those of the peer group. According to Sebald, adolescents turn to their parents in regard to scholastic or occupational goals – in general, future oriented decisions. They turn to their friends in regard to clothing, social activities, dating, or recreation – in general, present-oriented decisions (Berns, 2004).
Psychiatrist Judith Brook (Berns, 2004) has proposed a developmental model of adolescent substance abuse. She believes that the seeds for adolescent probelm behavior can be sown buring early childhood if parents don’t provide adequate nurturance and families are conflict-ridden. Children growing up in such families fail to identify with parental attitudes, values, and behavior. As these children approach adolescence, they lack self-control and turn to peers for immediate gratification. They thus become suspectible to drug and alcohol abuse, especially if their friends to drugs and/or drink alcohol.
The same results shown in Patterson, DeBaryshe, & Ransey’s research (Berns, 2004). When parents react negatively to adolescents’ push for autonomy and become overly strict or overly permissive, the adolescents are more likely to rebel by exhibiting problem behavior. The research also suggests that the effect of conflict between a child and one parent can be offset by a positive relationship with the other parent. Positive parent-child relationship can also negate the influence of a peer group that abuss drugs. Thus, parenting styles established in childhood impact adolescent problem behavior.
Based on the description above, the researcher is interested in recognizing how the parent-adolescents conflict affect to adolescence’s self-efficacy.
THEORETICAL REVIEW 1. Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is the belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcames. It is related to empowerment (enabling individuals to have control over resources affecting them), as well as to cencepts discussed earlier in this chapter, such a personal agency, achievment motivation, internal locus of control, history of and attributions of succes/failure, and learned helplessness (Berns, 2004). Self-efficady differs from the aformentioned concepts in that it can predict future performance in addition to explaining present performance.
Bandura's influential theoretical paper on self-efficacy led to more conceptual clarity by introducing two kinds of expectations about the self: outcome expectations, which are "the person's estimate that a given behavior will lead to certain outcomes," and efficacy expectations, which refer to a person's belief "that one can successfully execute the behavior required to produce the outcomes" (Bandura, 1999).
motivation (Mortimer &Shanahan, 2002). It refers to the perception of oneself as a causal agent in one’s environment, as having some control over one’s circumstances, and being capable of carrying out actions to produce intended effects. Individuals with high self-efficacy think of themselves as competent, effective, and able. Those with low self-efficacy are more likely to see themselves as powerless, helpless, and fatalistic. A large body of evidence has accumulated on the beneficial consequences of self-efficacy for individual functioning and well-being (e.g., academic and occupational achievement, recovery from illness, general physical and mental health, life satisfaction). Much of this research is provided by Bandura and his colleagues.
Such beliefs are a major basis of action and inaction over the life course (Mortimer & Shanahan, 2002). Those with high self-efficacy, especially in such consequential domains as education, interpersonal relations, and occupational contexts, are more likely to be architects of their lives and to see themselves as such. Those with a low sense of personal efficacy are more likely to see their lives as products of forces and circumstances beyond their control. The life courses of both types of persons may correspond to their efficacy expectations, since there is a self-fulfilling prophecy element to such beliefs.
2. Parent-Adolesents Conflict
Conflict is a process in which various antecedent condition lead individuals or groups to engage in actions that are incompatible with the interests or goals of others (Baron & Byrne, 2005). Conlict is a process, but when it became too extreem, big effect can exsist and be dangerous to both. Bar-Tal (2011) defined conflict as situations in which two or more parties perceive that their goals and/or interests are in direct contradiction with one another and decide to act on the basis of this perception. This definition suggests two conditions for eruption of the conflict: identification of the contradiction and the decision to act on this basis. Accordingly, it is not enough that each of the parties will identify the contradiction in goals and/or interests: In order for a conflict to erupt, it is necessary that at least one party will decide to act upon this contradiction and bring it into the light, at least in a verbal expression. This means that conflicts may erupt also when in the first stage only one side perceives that its goals and/or interests are in direct contradiction with the goals or interests of another party and decides to act on the basis of this perception. Such a move causes the other side to note the contradiction and act as well, leading to the surge of the conflict.
Conflicts are inseparable and significant part of human life on every level of interaction; there are interpersonal conflicts, intra-group, intergroup, inter-organizational, intra-societal, and interethnic as well as international conflicts and even inter-civilization conflicts - to note the most salient ones as we move from the micro to mega conflicts (Galtung, from Bar-Tal 2011). They take place constantly and continuously because it is unavoidable that human beings will not have disagreements over goals, interests, values and/or beliefs. It is just simply natural that people, as individuals and groups, who differ in aspects such as belief systems that include aspirations, values, goals, needs, as well as in ways of socialization, cultural environments, or political and economic systems will have conflicts over almost every tangible or non-tangible element of desire.
the teen years do have the special potential of creating conflict between parent and child (Lamanna & Riedmann, 2009).
RESEARCH METHOD
The research method used in this research is quantitative research methods with indigeneous psychology approach. The data obtained in the open-ended questionnaire developed by Kim (2010) to see conflict parent-adolescents dan structure questionnaire to see self-efficacy, which will be analyzed statistically. The variable used in this study are self-efficacy as the dependent variable, and the parent-adolescents conflict as the independent variable. As futher, we will analyzed differences between adolescents conflict with mother and father, and types of conflict that they had with mother and father.
Research participants used in this study were the students college in Diponegoro University, Semarang. Total of participants are 1523, which male participants are 479 and female participants are 1044. The data analysis was performed using the computer program of SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions), statistical analysis of chi-square. Therefore, this study will use paired t-test to see difference betwen adolesecence’s conflict with mother and father.
RESEARCH RESULTS
Statistical analysis had result that conflict with mother had very significantly effect on adolescents’ self-efficady (F=5,700; p=0,000, p<0,01). Conflict with father had very significantly effect on adolescents’s self-efficacy (F=6,893; p=0,000, p<0,01). Conflict with mother higher than conflict with father by the mean score mother-adolescents conflict is 3,43 and the mean score father-adolescents conflict is 3,39.
There are differences betwen type conflict by the gender. There are differences between girl’s self-efficacy and boy’s self-efficacy (t=4,184; p<0,001), where girl’s self-efficacy (mean score=126,93) higher than boy’s self-efficacy (mean score=122,41). Further analyzed can be described as shown in the graphic 1 and 2.
Graph 1. Types of adolescents conflict to their parents
DISCUSSION
Based on the results of data analysis, it shows that parent-adolescents conflict had significant relation to adolescence’s self-efficacy. It can explained with results founded by Forehand and colleagues (Grych & Ficham, 2001,) similarly report that positive parent-adolescent relationships serve as a buffer of cumulative family stressors including divorce and interparental conflict, but as a main effect on adolescent functioning. In Javanese, adolescents remains dependent on his parents or parent surrogates, usually until marriage, receiving from them the greater part of his support and a good deal of advice about his affairs (Geertz, 1989).
Bandura (1999) says parents providing a stimulating family environment, being consistently and contingently responsive to their children's behavior, emphasizing early independencetraining, engaging autonomy granting and less intrusive interactions, using less hostile and more inductive disci plinary techniques, and relating to the child in a warm andemotionally supportive way tend to have children with a more internal control orientation. Conversely, parents who provide less stimulation, who are less responsive and more authoritarian, intrusive, overprotective, rejecting, or neglectful are more likely to have children with an external control orientation.
And several studies demonstrated that reported consistency of parental behavior (i.e., retrospective parental or children's reports), and retrospectively reported behavioral and attitudinal clusters like parental warmth, acceptance, and support foster later belief in internal control in children and adolescents, whereas retrospectively reported punitive and overly "controlling" behavior as well as hostile attitudes produce more belief in external control (Bandura, 1999).
Differences between girl’s self-efficacy and boy’s self-efficacy can explained by the Bandura analysis (1999) that the parental antecedents of generalized self-efficacy expectations are differently patterned across gender. In addition, although internal locus of control and self-efficacy are only moderately correlated on the adult level, boys show more continuity than girls in the parental correlates of control beliefs. Research by Mortimer & Shanahan (2002) indicates that males and females differ in their sense of self-efficacy, with males being perceived (by self and others) as having a stronger sense of general self-efficacy and personal control than females in our society. Several extensive reviews of the child development research on sex indicate that boys are more active, impulsive, aggressive, engage in more exploratory and risk-taking behavior, seek opportunities to exert control over their environments, and have more self confidence than do girls. In contrast, females describe themselves as more generous, sensitive, nurturing, and considerate of others. The self-concepts of females emphasize interpersonal relations and communion and not competition and mastery in the way that they relate to their environments. In this research, girl’s self-efficacy liltle higher than boy’s self-efficacy. It is diffrerent from what we discuss above. It can be explain that Girl in Javanese have chores since early, they usually have occupied with a continual round of domestic duties (Geertz, 1989). When they have many duties to finish, they learn to accomplish well. According to Bandura’s theory, they have mastery experience, that simply put, success raises self-efficacy, failure lowers it. Bandura (1999) explained that the most effective way of developing a strong sense of efficacy is through mastery experiences. Performing a task successfully strengthens our sense of self-efficacy. However, failing to adequately deal with a task or challenge can undermine and weaken self-efficacy.
Adolescents need firm guidance, coupled with parental accessibility and emotional support, as they search for identity and begin to define who they are and will be as adults. They also need to learn effective methods for resolving conflict. Throughout this period, it’s important for parents to remember “the obvious fact that most adolescents make it to adulthood relatively unscathed and prepared to accept and assume adult roles” (Lamanna & Riedmann, 2009). Like in Javanese family, adolescents remain dependent on his parents or parents surrogates, usually until marriage, receiving from them the greater part of his support and a good deal of advice abaout their affairs (Geertz, 1989).
REFERENCE
Bandura, A. 1999. Self-Efficacy in Changing Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Baron, R.A., Byrne D.2005. Psikologi Sosial. Jilid 2. Edisi Kesepuluh. Alih Bahasa: Ratna Djuwita. Jakarta: penerbit Erlangga.
Bar-Tal, D. 2011. Introduction: Conflicts and social psychology. In Bar-Tal, D. (Ed.), Intergroup conflicts and their resolution: Social psychological perspective. New York: Psychology Press
Berns, R. M. 2004. Child, Family, School, Community. Socialization and Support. Sixth edition. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Geertz, Hildred. Y 1989. The Javanese Family. A Study of Kindship and Socialization. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc.
Lamanna, M. A., Riedmann A. 2009. Marriages & Families. Making Choices in A Diverse Society. Tenth Edition. Belmont: Thomson Higher Education
